627: Profit Isn’t Just About Money with Morgan Weber
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What does it really mean to grow your business? In this episode, Morgan Weber of Lucky Pup shares why growth isn’t always the answer and how defining success on your own terms is crucial for long-term sustainability. She unpacks the danger of chasing vanity metrics, the importance of budgeting your time like your finances, and why business owners must avoid resentment and burnout. Morgan also explains how to build a “filter system” based on values and goals to guide decision-making. Whether you’re solo or scaling, this is an honest look at staying aligned in a world pushing constant expansion.
Main Topics
Time, money, and energy profit
Boundaries and burnout prevention
Making values-based decisions
Vanity metrics vs real success
Transitioning to pet retail ownership
Main takeaway: ““You don’t get an award for how much pain you carry.”
In pet care, it’s easy to fall into the trap of overworking, overgiving, and overcommitting. But martyrdom isn’t a badge of honor—it’s a fast track to burnout. Your clients don’t expect you to sacrifice everything, and your business won’t thrive if you’re running on empty. Instead, choose sustainability. Set boundaries. Prioritize time, energy, and joy. You deserve a business that supports your life—not one that consumes it.
About our guest:
Morgan Weber is a multi-passionate entrepreneur and the founder of Lucky Pup Adventures, a pet sitting and dog walking company launched in 2013. Following a deeply personal loss, she founded Memory Flame Candle Co. to bring comfort to grieving hearts. She also hosts the Lucky Pup Podcast and offers coaching for pet professionals, helping them build values-based businesses. Most recently, Morgan and her husband purchased a local pet supply store, adding retail ownership to their entrepreneurial journey. With a background in design and a heart for community, Morgan helps others grow intentionally and sustainably.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Pet Sitter Confessional, its hosts, or sponsors. We interview individuals based on their experience and expertise within the pet care industry. Any statements made outside of this platform, or unrelated to the topic discussed, are solely the responsibility of the guest.
Links:
Lucky Pup Adventures: https://www.luckypupadventures.com
Memory Flame Candle Co.: https://www.memoryflamecandleco.com
Lucky Pup Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luckypuppod
IndiePet (for retail pet stores): https://www.indiepet.org
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Pet Sitter Confessional, its hosts, or sponsors. We interview individuals based on their experience and expertise within the pet care industry. Any statements made outside of this platform, or unrelated to the topic discussed, are solely the responsibility of the guest.
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet sitting, business growth, burnout, time management, energy profit, client retention, team management, personal values, business ecosystem, vanity metrics, slow growth, work-life balance, decision-making, business sustainability, coaching program.
SPEAKERS
Morgan W., Collin
Collin 00:00
Welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by our friends at timed pet and the National Association of Professional pet sitters. One of the toughest decisions of a business is to know what do we do next? Many times we often think it's to grow or not grow, stay the same. How do we navigate that world, especially when there's so much pressure to go in a particular direction, and how do we maintain a business that we want to be running and that fits with us? To cover this topic, I am really excited to have Morgan Weber, owner of all of the things on the show to talk about this and to help us walk through this process. Morgan, for those who aren't familiar with you, and for what all that you're doing, tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Morgan W. 00:53
Yeah. So I would say the thing that I started doing about 10, oh gosh, 12 years ago now, is being a dog walker and a pet sitter. So lucky pup Adventures is the name of our dog walking pet sitting business. And we started that in 2013 and then in let's see, 2020 I had the really tragic death of one of my dogs, and out of that was born memory flame Candle Company. So we send Memorial candles to people who have hurting hearts. So a lot of pet sitters are our clients, and we love getting to send those out. And then, oh gosh, like two years ago, I started the lucky pup podcast because I had some things to say, and I thought, why not start a podcast? So I have a very season one, and I'm hoping to start season two. But you know, there's some other things in my life at the moment, so the podcast has kind of taken a backseat. And then I started a coaching program, because I really love working with other pet sitters. And then the newest thing that we decided to do is my husband has been a manager at a local pet shop, like a pet supply store, for the last seven, eight years, and we had the chance to buy the store this winter, and so we decided to do that too. So when you say all of the things, it's it's true, there's a lot of stuff going on over here
Collin 02:13
well. And the reason, you know what, that's one of the reasons why I like, I wanted to have this conversation with you, Morgan, is, A, I know that you're really passionate about it, but B, you are also a very busy person, and you're adding things to your life. And so for you, Morgan, how do you know when to add stuff in and how it fits? Because there's always this call of to do more, to do more. And if we look at you, we go, oh, well, Morgan's doing more. What's your thought process as you look in, adding these things
02:39
on? Yeah, so it's the
Morgan W. 02:41
timing has worked out really well with a lot of these things, which very much has been that our pet sitting business has grown to a place where we have a really great team who can do a lot of the things that have allowed me to have a little bit more free space to pick up something new. And so for me, it becomes like, what is something that I'm passionate about, and then that I can dedicate some extra time to. And it really is a matter of how much free space Have I grown for myself? And then what do I want to fill some of that free space with? So thankfully, with the pet store edition, my husband is like he's the operator. So he does, he does most of the in store things of making the store run. And I have called myself the creative director. So I get to help kind of pick a direction for the store, and kind of be more of the visionary, and work on some of the marketing and things like that. And so I don't have as much on a day to day basis that I have to do for the store, but I can tell you, so we bought the store in December, and now that when we're talking it's the end of April, and I finally feel like things aren't on fire. So it really took that full, you know, five months of actually owning the store for things to really kind of settle down. And then it was a few months leading up to buying the store too, where things were just very hectic. And we definitely, my husband, I kind of looked at each other as this was happening. We said, you know, if this had, if this opportunity had come to us a year or two prior, I don't think we could have made it happen just because we didn't have enough bandwidth. And so really trying to put a reasonable boundary on your actual bandwidth, I think is one of the hardest things for me, and I think for a lot of other business owners, and it's definitely something that I struggle with. But I am also very cognizant of burnout and how I never want to go into burnout, because I spent a lot of years working in a burnout state or on the edge of a burnout state, and I realized how detrimental it was to myself, to my household, to my team, to be in that type of space, and so being very much committed to not getting back to that spot is something that helps keep some of the bumpers in the bowling alley, per se, to. Try to keep me going down the middle, because I would love to do more of the pot with the podcast, but I've also recognized that I've picked up enough other things that I was going to do a whole season on burnout on the podcast, but then I realized the irony of like going into burnout to create a podcast about burnout was really not the best choice, and so that's why that's kind of on the side burner, but I try to keep, like a project parking lot, sometimes, of things that I would like to do, but I just don't quite have the capacity yet to do. So that's another little helpful tip that I like to use.
Collin 05:33
Well, because matching that back to a statement that you made earlier. Of you grew some free space so that you could know what to fill it with. And so those go hand in hand. I think it's really important what you said there, Morgan, if we we have, there's always more stuff to do in the day and the year and our lifetime. There's just this stuff sitting over here. And if we don't have a handle on what it is, we never know when to slot it into our day. And as we grow that free space, because, you know, you mentioned how you had your first business, and then you grew it to a point where you weren't doing all of this stuff. So you got that time back, and so you were able to turn and look at this parking lot and go, What over here fits in this new time? And it's all it's, I mean, it sounds like it's really just like it's budgeting, right for your finances of man, okay, I've saved $1,000 let me look at what I need to spend money on, because sometimes you may go, oh, well, here's the thing for $800 I could spend that now. Oh, but here's another project. Here's another thing that's $2,000 so I need to wait a little bit. I'm just gonna keep this space over here and keep this for this moving forward and making sure that those are matched well. But that takes knowing ourselves too,
Morgan W. 06:43
yeah, and we don't think about budgeting our time, and I am notoriously bad at budgeting my time, so it feels like a little bit like pot Collin the kettle black here. But, you know, there's a definite you have to be a little bit realistic. And I am very much an optimist, and so I like to think, oh, gosh, this new thing can't take that much effort, you know, like buying a pet supply store. How hard can it be? You know, like, what all could go wrong here? And so, so there's that aspect of it, but also, again, kind of circling back to the burnout side is I know what it feels like to be completely burnt out and wanting to burn it all to the ground and just the the helplessness feeling that comes with that, and like the the physical and mental pain that comes along with that. And so I try to be very conscious now of of taking an inventory every so often and just saying, okay, how am I doing right now? Like, am I? Am I overworked? Am I did I take on too much? You know, what all can get handed off. And then what is the process by which things need to get handed off? Is there somebody currently on my team who can help me with some of these things? Is there an outside source do I need to hire a VA? Do I need to hire some marketing help? Do I need to hire a bookkeeper? Do I need to hire help with my hiring? You know, all of those things are possibilities to start outsourcing when we really think about, okay, what is the thing that I am good at, and then also, what is the thing that I'm passionate about? Because I think we don't have to always add new things to our businesses, we can just also expand things that we're already doing. There's a lot of really cool projects that I've thought about doing for our pet sitting business that haven't happened because I started a podcast, or I, you know, started a coaching program. So and now that we have a little bit more bandwidth, some of those things are hopefully going to kind of circle back around again. But yeah, being able to budget our time is, there's there's finite time. And I think the other side of that is when we think about budgeting our time, and we think, you know, gosh, like life only has so much time, and there are so many, like, I'm a personality where there are so many exciting things in the world, and I want to be able to go travel, and I want to go and have my hobbies, but I also want to do these other cool business things, and trying to understand that, like, Hey, I can't do all of these things all at the same time. So what am I willing to say no to in order to say yes to something else? And we, a lot of us, have a hard time remembering that when we say yes to something else, it means we have to say no to something in order to make that space.
Collin 09:27
Yeah, I have a note here. I'm going to show it up. It says, I keep it on my desk. It says, What will I give up? And I have to have this. This is a question that Megan asks me all the time, and I've just had to put it on my desk, because every day, every day, we are making decisions that will impact our future self and our future time. And I always have to have this in mind whenever we look at a project or looking at an event or looking at hiring or looking at whatever that is, or doing something with our podcast going, oh. Hey, If this is interesting, I have to also say, what will I give up? I have to keep that in mind. Sometimes the answer is, I don't have to give anything up to make this work, if I do x, y, z, but sometimes it is, oh, I can't go on that thing, or I can't, you know, take on those visits. Or I can't, I can't. And being realistic, and we have to that. You really have to be honest with yourself in that moment and go, if I, because I think what a lot of that starts from is just our passion, right? We go, Okay, I only want to do things if I can do them in with excellence. I want to do them really well. And so if that's what I'm committed to, why would I take on something that's going to limit my ability to pursue that or to live in my values and my goals.
Morgan W. 10:47
I love when you talk about values and goals too, because I am a huge fan and a huge believer in values and goals and culture, and I actually do a word, or if it ends up being a phrase, because I can't just pick one word, I have to pick a phrase for every year, and I've actually started writing them down, and I put them on my computer so I can remind myself all of the time of, like, what am i What's my commitment for this year? Like, what is my focus for this year? And it's, I'm sure, it's a bit of manifesting, you know, like, when you, when you pick a word or a phrase and then you actively try to follow it, you know, it is a manifestation of its own kind. But it has been very amazing to me how a year, like when I pick a word or a phrase in December, how well it actually fits the year ahead, and some of the challenges that we have. And so I think it's really helpful when you consider that as, again, that could call that a value, call it a goal. It when you have this thing that you want to work towards, it can help be a filtering system. So when you are given those opportunities of, you know, do I want to do X, or do I want to do Y? And you can run through a filter system to say, you know, is this one? One, is this alignment with my goals? Two, is this an alignment with my values? Three, is this an alignment with my culture? And then four, is this an alignment with the the way I wanted to tackle this year, and the direction that I wanted to go? There's always room to pivot. And there's always room to say, you know, I thought this is the way I wanted to go. No more. I want to do something else. There's always room for that. But when you can create some form of filtering system, it can help take some of the subjectiveness out of our decisions. Because again, being an eternal optimist, I am very much always like, well, of course, I can do all of these things. Of course I can, you know, take on this new project, but when I really look at it more objectively, and I kind of take the emotion out it can help me to make some of those decisions in a way that's not quite as emotionally based. And again, taking it through that filter system of a value or a theme for the year can be super helpful for me.
Collin 12:56
As you're talking about the filter, I actually just had to Google this to remember it when we used to do field sampling in our back, in our biology days, we would do these mesh sieves where you could have certain micron sizes for what you were trying to get out at the end. And you had to have that, that pre thought out of, what do I want at the end of this? And then you have this system that will filter out, sieve through everything else, so that holding in your hand, you only have the sediment or the organism that you want of a particular size. Now that does mean that you have lost other information above or below that, and you have to be okay with that, because you have to go in with that purpose and know I'm doing this, and to have that, that pre structured filter system allows you, it decreases that mental burden on you, from a business owner of like, Hey, I have my mission, vision, values and goals written out, so as I get in new information or opportunities, if I can look at this and go line by line to know, well, this doesn't fit, that's what does I love, That way of filtering out, because that also helps preserve our time as we're looking for ways of going. How do I maintain my commitments, you know, and building these for ourselves, both in our personal life and in our business?
Morgan W. 14:13
Yeah, absolutely. Especially, I love how you just worded that, because there's so many decisions that we have to make. So like one of the the things I think about, I'm sure this has been said by many people over the eons, but we only have so many decisions to make in a day, and, or I should say, the capacity to make so many decisions in a day, and there are always gonna be more decisions we could potentially be making than there are available neurons to make these decisions. And so, like, President Obama had a comment that he didn't pick out his clothes like he had somebody else he wore the exact same suit every single day, and somebody else picked his tie, because he said, I can only make so many decisions in a day, and I don't want to waste one of those decisions on what tie to wear today. And I think about that so much in business, where I do this a lot, in my coaching program and. I do it for myself all the time, which is, you have a decision to make, and I just say, Well, what do your values say? Oh, well, you know, when you put it that way, the decision is much easier. So we had a question about, we're working on a delivery program for the pet store, and it's this question of, okay, well, if we're going to be delivering, you know, frozen food, we're gonna have to send them, send a cooler if they don't have a, you know, garage code to give us. So we could put this food in a freezer for them, and we're going to have this cooler. And what if they don't have a cooler to give back to us? Are we going to charge them for the cooler? How are we going to track this? And we said, well, hold on our our values say that we just give them the cooler. And if a couple times we don't get a cooler back, like, you know what, that's okay. It all, it'll all bleed out in the wash. And you know, it's not worth the hassle of us tracking it, and it's also not worth the hassle of our customers feeling nickel and dimed to buy a $5 cooler, etc, etc, etc. And so it could have been this whole big process of, you know, what's going to be the operating system for us to make sure we get a cooler, and they have a cooler, and it's like, no, let's just, let's just have extra coolers, and not, you know? And like, I'm like, Oh, yep, that makes it simplifies the process, but also it fits with the values that we said we wanted to lead with in this process or in this project?
Collin 16:22
Yeah, I'm only seven hours away, so I don't think my request for the hand delivery was too much to ask if I'm being on No,
Morgan W. 16:27
we're gonna really expand our service area here,
Collin 16:32
but on our businesses there are. There can be, I'll add this. There can be these, these pressures on our business to do more, push more, be more. I would like for you to walk through those pressures and how we start navigating those.
Morgan W. 16:50
I think those are the hardest, because so many of us get into especially pet care businesses. We get into it because we have a heart for it, and we have a heart for service, and we have a heart for the pets and for serving our clients. And so it can be really, really hard to put some of those boundaries up. And, you know, I'm not perfect at it. There's definitely things where it's like, you know, should I make a different decision here? Probably, but is it worth my the emotional effort for me to process through this? You know, sometimes it's not, and that's okay, too, but, yeah, I think it really just depends on, like, what understanding, again, what is the goal of whatever it is that you're doing? What is like you mentioned your what's your mission? What's your purpose, what's your vision for this, and then deciding, what do I have actual capacity for, in terms of my emotional capacity as the business owner. What's the capacity of my team, if I've got a team to make this happen? And then just realizing, like, what is the thing that you're willing, I like to think of it as an investment. Like, what is the thing that you are willing to invest both time and energy into? And that's going to look different for every single person. But trying to decide, okay, like, what is my hard stop? Like, what investment Am I willing to make? Because some investments pay off, some investments don't. But what is the investment that I'm willing to make without feeling resentment? Because I think that there is a big part, again, when we are heart led businesses that we want to give, and sometimes we give more than our clients appreciate, and when that happens, resentment builds up. And so what am I willing to give, regardless of whether or not my client is going to truly appreciate the amount of effort that it takes to make this happen, and if you are not willing to do it without their full appreciation resentment starts to grow, and that is not a good place to be in, because that's when we start getting into burnout again, and then our clients feel like they're being held captive by an expectation that they didn't sign up for. And then we don't feel good because, you know, it just keeps growing and growing and growing, and I don't think it's fair to put that on our clients. So thinking about, like, resentment and like, we don't get an award for how much, you know, pain we carry as business owners. So, you know, like, people say, Well, I haven't taken a vacation or a day off in three years. It's like, well, but that's not your client's fault, right? Like, that's the thing that we have to work with ourselves, and it's not fair to hold that type of resentment over our clients when they are just requesting a service, for example. Like it's our job to hold that boundary and say, I am not available and I'm not available can mean a lot of things. It can mean I'm going to sit on my couch in my pajamas tonight and I am unavailable to go visit you. It doesn't have to mean that my calendar is already full with other clients, but those are things I like to think about and really encourage people to value themselves and their team in this concept of like, not holding resentment. How much am I actually willing to give? And it's not our clients job to like. Like praise us every single day for the sacrifices that we make for them. Have
Collin 20:04
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Speaker 1 20:09
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Collin 20:34
If you're looking for new pet sitting software, you have time to pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting science bet.com/confessional Yeah, we don't get an award for how much pain we carry. That's need that. I need that stenciled on my wall. I need that in a couple different places, because we do kind of carry around a lot of that as a badge of honor of how much we're sacrificing. Because those and those, those kind of expectations, those pressures, those are coming internally, right? That's that's coming from us. That's what we we carry a lot of beliefs about what it means to be a business owner, about what we believe it means to provide our service. And that's not to say that going above and beyond isn't, isn't important, or is it necessary sometimes, but I think whenever we reach that point where we're growing, or we're adding, or we're doing more for the sake of unmet or unrealized expectations from somebody else, and it's, it's just, we're just going through the motions because that's what we think we've got to do. Like, there's so many I hear this story, a lot of well, I just, I started my business, and then it got really busy, so I hired because that's what I thought I needed to do. And now I'm hiring, and now I'm we're going down all these roads of the management and the this thing, how do I do this without really taking a step back to go? Is that what I want, though, like, is that where I need to go with this? Or even, like you said, like, sometimes you grow through expanding a service or adding a new thing, and knowing well, I just thought I needed to do this. And what you're really saying here, Morgan is going to take that big step back and go intentionally with forethought and with my full presence. What does this next step look like, and how is am I going to make sure I do this with excellence and without resentment. You said that word a lot, and it really resonated with me, because we take the our actions, these deeds, our service, our business, and if left unchecked, we can reach that point where every day we wake up and it's just another burden and that's something that that like, that's, that's, that's us like that we've got to work through that.
Morgan W. 22:50
I love what you just said there about carrying these burdens and also this ex the expectations that can come along with going above and beyond. And just as an example, I had a situation that I thought of as we were talking two very similar circumstances with clients, slightly different applications and different times of year. So I also like people to remember that the decisions we make in our slow times, we have to if we want to have some consistency, we have to be willing to think, Am I able to do the same level of service when life gets really, really busy and it's Christmas and I am booked solid, and everybody on my team is booked solid, and like, we're starting to run a little bit ragged. So a couple years ago, we had a ice storm right before Christmas. It was like two days before Christmas, and so most people are heading out of town, and we had a little bit of rain, you know, no big deal. But then it all froze. Well, at that point, our snow removal companies don't come out to service sidewalks and driveways, because it was rain, not snow, and it didn't hit their, like, one inch snow threshold. And so it was Christmas, and we were all slammed, and I had to spend a couple hours one day going to the store trying to find salt, which was really hard to find, because everybody else was buying salt, to say to salt their sidewalks. And I was running around to every single client trying to ice, de ice, a safe pathway for all of my team members to get to people's houses, because everything was icy and gross. And I was pissed, Collin, I was so mad because it was Christmas, and I was like, I don't have time for this. And I was like, all these clients should have thought of this themselves, and they should have gotten somebody out here to make this happen. And so I, like, made a whole rule, you know that I when I updated our service contract, it's like, Hey, if you don't have somebody to salt your sidewalks, I'm going to charge you an administrative fee for me to find somebody to do this for me, and I'm going to charge you, you know, also, for their time, right? So it turned into this whole thing, and I felt so vindicated at the time, because it was all this extra time that I didn't have time. For Well, compared to this last week, one of our clients, their door code let us in, but then it stopped working, so we, like, couldn't lock the door on our way out, and because the batteries died, and I happened to have time, so it was not a big deal for me to take the extra half hour to go over to their house, message with the client, find their batteries, you know, get everything back together, test it, leave. So that way the next person who came could, you know, get into the house again in the morning. And it took the same amount of time, probably more time, to change this person's batteries and their electric electronic door code as it took me to go buy salt and salt somebody's sidewalks, but it felt different because my the circumstances of my work week were completely different in a slower post holiday time than it did in the middle of a holiday rush. And so I think about that sometimes too of like, what am I feeling resentment over? And is it actually because I have booked myself too full, and so therefore I feel resentment for a, you know, fairly manageable thing that my clients may or may not be asking me for. You know that my clients didn't ask me to stop their sidewalks. I felt the need to to keep my team safe. But you know, those are things when we think about like the expectations and how some of those resentments can pile up, and a lot of times it's because we are stretching ourselves a little bit too thin. And then I also love the comment that you made there about like the conventions and the expectations that are put on us by other people, because we are in a community of other people within our industry, and we see what other people are doing, and we say, well, either they are explicitly hearing you need to grow in order to be fulfilled as a business owner, you need to grow. You need to hire a team. You need to do all these things. So either someone has told them that, or they have just absorbed it by being in a community that includes people who have large teams. And I think that the more we can buck convention and expectation, and we get back to more what's authentic to myself and what is something that I actually want to do, what is something that I actually enjoy doing, we're going to feel much more fulfilled as business owners. And I like to remind people that it doesn't matter if you go all in, if you could only do it for a short amount of time, because that doesn't help your clients in the long run, because your clients probably want you to be around for the next couple years while they've got their dog who is still with them, you know. And so if we overburden ourselves and overtax ourselves, and we want to just burn it all to the ground, because we don't want to do this anymore, that also doesn't help our clients. And so if we can put some boundaries in a way that makes it so this is a thing that we can sustain for the long term, you're actually going to be better off than burning out really, really fast
Collin 27:53
well, and you mentioned the stuff that we do in the slow times versus the busy times and being consistent, I'm often reminded of how during the slow times, one thing that kind of naturally ticks up is our level of marketing, content creation, outreach, events, social media, posts, blog writing. And what can happen is then, all of a sudden that becomes the new norm of, well, of course I'm blogging once a week, or, of course I'm posting three times a day, and I just do and then we try and maintain that, because that just becomes part of our unspoken expectation of what it means to run that kind of business. And I know Megan and I have really been feeling this lately of what if we did 5% less effort, what if we just pulled back a little bit, just 5% and we're gonna watch and see, how does that impact our new client? And what we pulled back even more and just trying to start ratcheting things down, because I feel like we've reached that point where we go, Well, what else do I do? Or how else do I do this? Or how else can I grow or do more or expand my business? And going, I we can't operate at 187% capacity. I don't know about you, Morgan, I can't. It's not something that I'm physically able to do, and going, Okay, I need to figure out where the mark, like, starting the margins. It's not just okay. I need to come out. I'm going to block out 10 days in a row, and I'm going to, you know, climb a mountain, and I'm going to go to my secret, secret safe space like I'm not doing that. It's going I just need to reek recarve Out 15 minutes a day, like starting there really helps you get that space back, so that you can then grow and expand in other ways that you're wanting to. And when we don't have that, that constraint where we're sitting at 100% capacity, you do start to feel like you're hopeless or it is helpless, because if you have those pressure saying you need to do more, why aren't you doing more, right? What else? Why aren't you? Why isn't your team bigger? Why aren't you, you know, servicing different areas? Why aren't you doing more walks? Why aren't you doing more posts? Why aren't you doing pop cup events? All of a sudden, you do start to feel like I'm I can't, and I can't and I can't, and then the possibilities start. Disappearing from our from us, because we just can't imagine a world with us doing those,
30:04
yeah. I call it the
Morgan W. 30:06
shame trio, which is the Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda is, yeah, oh, I could have done something. I should have done something. I would have done something different. And it only those aren't productive. They only take us into a into a gap, state of, you know, this is what's missing, and if we can refocus that instead on, like, I like to ask the question, but why? You know, after someone's like, well, I got to do this. Oh, I say, but, but why? Well, because so and so situation. I said, Okay, but why? You know, like, let's really get down to the true why is this thing important to you, or why is this important to somebody else? And it might be completely valid, and yes, we should actually do it, but really questioning, why do I think that this is something I should be doing, or I could be doing can be really helpful for me. And really getting into the understanding of, is this an intrinsic motivation, or is this, again, an expectation or a convention that I feel I need to be following, and it can just help to slow us down sometimes and just say, okay, but like, but why? Like, I was a child who asked why for everything, like, like, like, I wanted to know the reason behind it. I call it kind of the goal behind the goal. I want to know, like, what is the true motivation for this thing? And that can sometimes really help us decide, again, as a filtering system, is this something I should be doing or something I shouldn't be doing?
Collin 31:31
Well, that kind of comes into the same aspect of when we're looking at growth or doing more. A lot of times, metrics come into play of measuring and tracking and stuff. And there can reach that point of, of going, but, but, but, why am I? Why am I tracking these numbers? Why am I focused solely on XYZ, you know, or we reach that point where we go like, yeah, what's the, what's the point here, of, of all that I'm doing? We can, you can build a spreadsheet for literally anything. Let me know, I probably have it somewhere, buried deep in Google Sheets. And it's like, I What, but, but you know what you're saying here is to always ask yourself that question, why? Why am I doing this? Why am I going in and updating this sheet every three days? What is that really telling me? What am I getting out
Speaker 2 32:18
of that? Yeah, and I think I have a, really, this is one of my soapbox
Morgan W. 32:23
moment. So, Collin, I don't you inadvertently sent us into a soapbox moment, which
Collin 32:28
is, I'll just step out. You, I'll just be back. Just let me know that sounds good.
Morgan W. 32:33
So I have a, I have a very, what's the point relationship with metrics in terms of so often metrics are boiled down in a way that does not allow them to apply to the true holisticness That is a business. So you are a you know, you have a biology background. I have a building design background. And so the understanding that everything is an ecosystem. Our businesses are ecosystems. And when we change one thing, it has a ripple effect throughout our business. And when we focus on one individual metric, we sometimes disassociate it with the whole and so like, you know, people love to track, you know, new client requests. They love to track, you know, how many visits we had this week. They love to track their month over month revenue. And sometimes I say like, well, but what's the point of this metric? Because you might have, you know, a huge New Client Onboarding rate. But how does that relate to your client retention rate. And if you don't have a high client retention rate and also a high Client Onboarding rate, you're just churning your wheels. And it's like, is it worth spending your time getting new clients? If you could just spend that time focused on, like, nurturing your existing clients, you know, or, you know, same thing about like, oh, I added a whole bunch of new team members. But what I'm not saying is, I also lost a whole bunch of team members, so I have a high, you know, team member churn rate. Well, what could I be doing instead? So I think sometimes we I call them vanity metrics, because they're metrics that look really good when we share them with other people, or we we look at them just for ourselves, we say, oh my gosh, look how good I'm doing. Because my, you know, my revenue has grown year over year by 50% that's fantastic. But also, how has your time profits grown? Your revenue is growing, but like, what does that actually mean in terms of your business? Are you getting time to do your hobbies and spend time with your friends and your family? Do you actually make profit off of that? So sure, your revenue is growing, but it's also your profit growing, and so therefore you have time to pay or money to pay yourself, because how much of how many of us are underpaying ourselves in order to help our team run smoothly? You know, there's a lot of these kind of symbiotic you could say, you. Metrics that we don't always understand how they are related to something else in our business. And so I think metrics can be dangerous, just like I think goals can be dangerous. When we chase a certain goal, we sometimes miss the opportunities that are a better fit than this thing that we would focused in on. But with that, I've started to track my metrics on a stoplight scale, so I'm not looking at actual numbers with my metrics. I'm looking at, is it a red, a yellow or a green? Green means it's going in a positive direction. Things are going great. Yellow is it's cautionary is either it's going down or it has stayed kind of neutral for a while, and then red is like, things are really not good. So that I try to create more of, like a feeling based understanding in my business. How does my business actually make me feel again? I don't care if my revenues and my profits are way up, if I want to burn it all to the ground, right? So having a feeling metric in our business, I think can help us get more in tune with understanding the actual like ramifications of our business on ourselves, because we are not our business, we have a relationship with our business, and understanding how that relationship affects both directions. So if I'm feeling super burnt out, it's going to affect my business. And if my business is asking more of me than I have to give, that can also be a downside. Or if I need more from my business than it's currently giving me right now, oh, that's another like moment where I have to stop and, you know, reassess and take a new strategy so getting into the feel of business. And out of some of those, like hard metrics, can it's a different way of looking at business, but I think it can be super helpful.
Collin 36:48
Are you a passionate pet sitter or dedicated dog walker looking to take your career to the next level? Join the National Association of Professional pet CERs, the leading organization dedicated to elevating pet care with industry resources, ongoing education and a network of like minded experts. Naps empowers you to shine, whether you're expanding your business or building new client relationships, their community is here to support you every step of the way. Visit pet sitters.org today to learn more and join the movement. Take the leap and let your career flourish. Naps where pet care meets excellence. Well, you mentioned the word vanity metrics, and I'm we, when you say that, I'm immediately reminded of a McDonald's sign. Because what do they say beneath them? I don't know if they all do. They used to growing up, they used to say billions and billions served, right? They don't say that we're served well, right? It's just they don't say that they were like, they weren't served with quality or any of that stuff. It was just a pure numbers game meant to sound and be impressive. And that's where I find my brain, and a lot of people's brains go to is the how many people have i How many dog walks have I done? What's that number? What's the number for this? What's the number? How many are, are on my team? How many? We just look at the how much, or how many, and we don't think of how well or how good, or how much compassion, or how much rest, we don't look at the other side and go, Well, that's and so it really is defining what is important. If you're all about a numbers game that is certainly a kind of business to run, and we get caught up in that. And I think a lot of that comes from the expectations of, well, we'll just be another widget maker. And so my I am judged based off of my ability to produce and ship widgets. And we have to, again, I'm not making widgets. I don't you wouldn't want to buy any that I made, any because they're horrible. But like, it is. It's a, it's a, if I probably Chase numbers, what else am I sacrificing in in that pursuit and really knowing what is my goal? What is this going on right now, and how, how is this feeling? Does this match with everything that we've talked
39:02
about. And I know
Morgan W. 39:04
there's this, especially at the end of the year, I see it all the time, where everyone's posting what their growth number was for the year. And I think that can really even for myself, like and I'm kind of this, I preach the, you know, who cares about metrics? And, you know, tap into your own authenticity. You know that? Like, that's the lens I'm kind of coming from. And even I kind of take a step back and go, Oh, but did I do enough this year? Like, look at what everybody else is doing. Look at, oh, they hit six figures. They hit seven figures, all of these numbers. You know, they have so many team members. And for me, it's like, well, so what? Like, that's fantastic for them, if that's what they their goal was, I think, like power to you. Let's celebrate your achievements, but remembering that that's not my goal, and my goal is very much in my business always has been. We do very slow organic growth, because for me, that's what feels best. You know, I try to keep a good balance between um. Growing my team and growing our clients, because for me, I don't want the stress of getting too many, too much of one and not enough of the other. Or what if i i got all these new clients and I hired a bunch of team members, but then, oh, maybe I hired the wrong people, and now a bunch of my team members are gone and Well, shit, now I've got all these clients I have to serve, you know? And then that, that's a another lopsided side, right? And so for me, it's very much just always been very steady, organic, slow growth. It's almost all word of mouth. And for a lot of people, they're like, Well, what are you doing? Like, you could be huge. And it's like, well, I know I could be, but I don't really want to. We've got a I call it a small but mighty team, and it's like, I don't think I want twice as many team members, I don't think I want twice as many clients. I just really enjoy where we're at right now and and that's okay, and sometimes I do get into that comparison game, but then I remind myself that that's not my goal, and it's great that somebody else has that goal, but it's not the goal that I want to have. And so just being really content with what's happening in my own lane, and I can, you know, reach over and I can cheer for my friends who are doing something different, but for me, like this is what I'm I'm looking for, and that's okay,
Collin 41:17
well, because there are more things in life than than just financial profit and gain too. Like you mentioned one of those end of year reports of what we brought in in revenue. And man, that that really, I do the same thing where, you know, we're making our very much of we can only run our business. We have control over our business. And then that one post, person posts that one thing, and you're
Speaker 3 41:41
like, what I do? Oh, man, what did we do wrong?
Collin 41:46
You start like, really, like, really questioning all of your decisions, and it's just a horrible, dark place to go to. So for you, Morgan, you know when you think of profit in it from a business? You know what comes to mind for you, yeah. So another soapbox moment. Oh, sorry, I'll be back. Yep. So
Morgan W. 42:07
my, I like to look at profit, and this is all coming from one of my own business coach, which is visionary. It's VCA, oh gosh, visionary CEO Academy. I had to think that through for a second. But they very much talk about this, the three prong approach to profit, which is time, money and energy. And we can really only focus on growing one at a time, maybe two, but you definitely can't do all three at a time. And so understanding that sometimes we have a season where we choose the profit that we're chasing. So sometimes, if you just need more money, you need to choose the money profit, right? Like, I don't care that I'm working 14 hours a day, seven days a week. There is something in my life where I need the money, and so I'm going to chase the money for right now. And we've all been there. We've all had those seasons of our business, and the other seasons of our business can look like I am really tired of working 14 hours a day, seven days a week. I want to grow my my energy profits like I want to actually have energy left at the end of the day where I can spend time with my friends, my family, my own dogs. I want to take my own dogs for a walk at some point. You know, that's a different type of profit that we can focus on in our business, and it takes a it's a different look. When we're focusing on that profit, then we're looking at just a pure revenue profit. We can also look at our time profit like, I want time away. I want to go travel. I want to go, you know, if you got kids, I want to be able to go to my kids activities in the middle of the day, because that's important to me. Whatever that looks like. You, that's, again, a different focus in your business than just pure revenue or pure profit. Like the most profitable business is one where you do all of the services and you hire nobody to do anything, right? Because you take all of the money, you can put it all in your pocket. But the downside of that is that you're doing all of the things for everybody, and so that you tend to, you know, you put a limit on something. So if you're doing all the things for everybody, you have to put your limits on how much you can actually do. And when you have a team, sometimes it means that you might take less money because you are giving some of that money to other people, but you probably are getting a higher return on either your time or your energy. So it just kind of depends on what's the season that you're in, what's important to you in this moment. And then how can we change things around in our business? What kind of strategy do we need to take in order to focus on one or the other? And there's no good or bad, there's no right or wrong. This is not a moral judgment. It's not that you're morally good or bad, if you focus on one type of profit, but it's more an understanding of, Okay, where am I at right now, and what's going to serve me the most, and it's going to serve my business the most. Like, it's it can be frustrating on my team sometimes, like, we have a big focus on, if you want time away, you get it like, I don't approve. Move somebody's time away. Because when I was an employee, when I put time in, like, put in my time off request, like, No, I have a thing I want to do. I've got concert tickets, I've got a family get together. You know, this is it's a non negotiable, like, I'm going to this thing. And so I very much take that approach as a boss as well. And so that can put us in sticky moments. Because, like, we had a lately where my husband and I were traveling, my two of my full time people were gone, and then I had like, one or two of my part time people were also gone. So it was like there were like two people left who could do work in our business. And that meant I had to turn people down. I had to turn our clients down. But for me, it was worth it, because happy employees Trumps serving all of the people all of the time. And so those are things that I have decided in our business, that that is part of our our culture and our values. And so sometimes the profit takes a hit, because I want to focus on the time and the energy of myself and my employees and so again, there's no right or wrong. It's just understanding what are those trade offs. If you're saying yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else, and then understanding, again, that resentment, both in our team and within our clients, and how it's all connected to each other,
Collin 46:19
because often we don't really understand how important those other two are to us until we don't have them, we think we're in business, and it's again, it's not bad to make money in business. That's fine. We have bills to pay. It's a service that we are doing, and people are paying us to do it and do it. Well, that's totally fine. But we often think, Okay, well, I just have to make money, and I'm focused on money, money, money, money, money, money, money. And we just slowly let the time and energy disappear from our, you know, our graph of importance, but they're still important, right? They don't, they don't. They actually have impacts to our lives, right? The time part, often we look up and we go, I haven't had Christmas with grandma in five years, right? Like, this is something that really hit me, because we didn't live, we didn't live close to our families for a very long time, and we only would see them once or twice a year. And it was like, well, if, if I only see my dad on Christmas, um, I don't have 10 years with him. I have 10 days with him left, so all of a sudden, well, that changes everything. When you put it like that, I don't I can't have 240 hours. Or, you know that just over the next time like this, I have to rearrange things and the energy too. We crash when we get home. We get short tempered. We don't have the energy to do things that we love with our loved ones, and all of a sudden that resentment comes in because we've elevated money above all else, so we don't think it can move. And so what I love about what you've you've talked about Morgan, is that these move organically, they move intentionally, and we have control over them and what priority they take place in our life and our business. And I think that's what should be. One of the most freeing things that we can take away is going It's okay, and I can, and I should elevate my time over profit and energy for a season, if that's important, and then I can rearrange and move and and allow these things to fluid. They kind of go from one to the other as my needs dictate and as the needs of my my life and my business dictate as well.
Morgan W. 48:30
Absolutely and that understanding that you're in control, right? And again, we're we're only in control of so much, right? We can't control our clients. We can't control, you know, potential clients and things like that, but I like to say that nearly everything is figureoutable, like we can find a strategy, we can find a solution to kind of figure out nearly everything in our businesses. And I really want business owners to feel empowered that they have the opportunity to make those choices and to to find what's going to work best for them. And one of the things that makes me the saddest when I hear business owners say like, well, I just I've got no other options left, because it means that either something sometimes that is true, sometimes life circumstances mean that we have very few choices because of everything else that's going on around us. But for most things, we have some agency, and we have some control, at least in the choices that we're making in response to other things. And I think I also just had a different viewpoint of burnout and making these choices to focus on energy and time and our businesses, because back in 2020 when we had to choose behavioral euthanasia from one of our dogs. Two and a half weeks later, we found out that my husband had cancer, and it was this moment of like, your brain always goes to the worst possible scenario in situations like this. And it was very much this harrowing moment for me of realizing that I was making certain. Choices in our business to limit the time that we he and I were spending together. And I kind of had this moment of like, Oh, my God, if worse comes to worse, and like, this is the end. Is this the legacy that I would have chosen to live? And I realized in that moment that the answer was no, like I would have made different choices. Because when you are like, in your 20s and your 30s, you know, even in your 40s, 50s, 60s, you think you have all of this time. And when a different perspective is shown to you that maybe you don't, maybe you don't have all of this time, you start to consider making different choices. And so it was just very much this moment of, okay, I don't necessarily have all this time. So what? What else would I want to do? And thankfully, everything was great. He had a very easy surgery, very easy recovery. You know, where five years later, everything's great, but it very much changed my perspective of how I wanted to approach business, especially in this business that is so heavily focused on caregiving and heart, you know, heart led services and being of service to other people, but also realizing I can't give everything of myself to other people and have nothing left for myself and for those that I love. And so understanding that I had some agency and control over that and I could make different choices, really put a completely different perspective for me of what business ownership can be like. And we started traveling and we started hobbies again, you know, all of these things, and my business is better off for it, and my team is better off for it, and my clients are better off for it, because I'm a happier, more engaged business owner than I was when I was feeling completely burnt out and hopeless and like, I needed to burn it all down in order to, just like, stay afloat. So I just kind of my encouragement to folks to you know, you don't need your own catastrophic life event to make a change. You know you can. You can make those changes now, before something terrible has happened or something that makes you rethink how you approach life and business. But, yeah, you have agency, you have control, and you can make things work for you in
52:04
the moment.
Collin 52:06
Morgan, I love that, and I'm so thankful for you coming on the show today, sharing and encouraging us in this to find that and to know what our priorities are, and to seek after those and put those above others priorities or our misconceptions on what our priorities are. I know there's a lot more here, and you have a lot to say and work through this on so for those who want to get connected, follow up with some questions, or, you know, pick your brain on some things. How best can can people do that?
Morgan W. 52:35
Yeah, so I like to post on Facebook and Instagram under lucky pup pod. So that's the name of the podcast. Is lucky pup podcast, but it's on hiatus, so head to social media. Follow me there instead. I post small snippets of things, and then also I've got a cohort coming up. So folks want some one on one, help to kind of work through making these choices in their business. I like to say that I don't make decisions for you or tell you how to run your business. You tell me what you want to work on, and we find the appropriate strategy or solution for it. So if that sounds like something that people want a little bit more help, they want that one on one time together to figure through some of these things. I'd love to chat with folks. Our cohort is going to be adding new members here very soon. So following on social media be the great the best place to find that kind of stuff. So that's lucky pup pod,
Collin 53:23
okay, well, I will have those links in the show notes and on the website, so people can start following along and see all the cool stuff that you're doing. Morgan, again, this means a lot for you to take time out of your day and dedicate some of your time to us. So thank you so much. Always a pleasure, Morgan. Well,
Morgan W. 53:38
thanks for having me. Collin, I love your guys's podcast, and so it's always a joy to spend some time with you. My
Collin 53:43
favorite part of my conversation with Morgan is when she said, you don't get an award for how much pain you carry. How easy is it for us to fall into this trap of overworking, over giving, over committing? But martyrdom isn't a badge of honor, it's a fast track to burnout. Your clients don't expect you to sacrifice everything, and your business won't thrive if you're running on empty. Instead, choose sustainability, set strong boundaries, prioritize your time, your energy, your joy. You deserve a business that supports your life, not one that consumes it. We want to thank today's sponsors, time to pet and the National Association of Professional pet sitters for making this show possible. And we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon.
